Laneway Workshop

In a post-pandemic environment, the homeowners, a professional couple, experienced changing lifestyles that led to several needs and wants. They needed a much better work from home office away from their basement to suite their now hybrid jobs several days a week. They needed a new garage to replace a crumbling shed dating from the 1920s. Avid road-warrior bicycle enthusiasts, they wanted a bike repair workbench area. They wanted spaces to store their children’s scooters and various household items, host birthday parties and barbeques, have a better backyard garden and outdoor seating area.

One half of the homeowner couple, an architect at a large Toronto firm and parent of young kids, had scant time with which to design and oversee the project, but still weighed in with design commentary much more than the average client. JC-A helped coalesce these varied goals into an elegant design vision with thorough details and attention to materials. We helped take the project through the design phase, through Toronto Committee of Adjustment and through the detailed construction documentation + construction phases. It was a wonderful collaboration.

Boreal
Hall

JC-A worked with Ontario-based mass timber supplier Element5 on promotional material to develop cost-effective student housing for various colleges and universities.  A variety of unit types and floor configurations were designed for optimum dimensional widths, lengths and spans of cross-laminated timber (CLT) for off-site fabrication.  The goals were to reduce material waste, control costs, offer adaptable building arrangements to suit different site locations, building heights, and a variety of sustainable exterior cladding options.

Bellwoods Semo Duplex

This project is a renovation of an existing 2-unit semi-detached home near Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park. The focus is predominately on the lower unit for the homeowner’s own use, reserving the upper unit as a rental. Lightwells will be carved from the front and rear yards, bringing daylight down to the new floor level of the underpinned basement. In the rear yard, an existing single storey extension will be removed to create a more generous outdoor seating area.  Each façade will be reclad and reinsulated, with a lime slurry applied over the existing brick areas to allow moisture to properly move through the wall. The mechanical system will upgraded to an energy efficient heat pump. The front façade is an architecture of collage, harmonizing an existing wood Tuscan column and existing oriel window with a new porch, new stairs and wood screens. For the interiors, the goal is similarly to bring coherence between old elements from the home (intricate patterned hardwood floors, cove ceilings), the client’s own highly curated and excellent mid 20th modern furnishings, and new natural materials and contemporary flourishes.

Cambridge
Fourplex

Coach
House

In 2017, Ottawa formalized into its zoning by-law an allowance for coach houses, elsewhere known as garden suites or secondary dwelling units in the backyards of existing homes for renters or extended family. Situated on a sloping site, rain is collected in barrels to reduce stormwater surges, and to provide harvested water for the homeowner’s gardening interests. Highly-insulated wall/roof panels and floor slab forms combine with a heat-pump system to make this is a highly energy efficient home. For the modern aesthetics, cues are taken from traditional wood-clad, pitched-roof Ontario cottage homes with a rusticated foundation. Wood and clay-walled interiors are replete with clever space-saving strategies throughout this comfortable, small home.